“Consolations of a Faddist.” By Henry S. Salt. (A. C. Fifield, 44, Fleet Street.) 6d. net.
This is a collection of verse by our comrade Salt, which have from time to time made their appearance in the “Humanitarian.” In a vigorously written prefatory note, the author remarks that “the fads of one age are the formulas of the next,” and rejoices that some of the worst cruelties against which the verses first appeared have gone or are no longer defended. There re-appears in this booklet the ten-line “Hymn of Thanksgiving” which appeared as a suggestion for the service at St. Paul’s Cathedral on the conclusion of the Boer War. A number of the poems are of a vigorous vegetarian order. A very good one, entitled “Efficiency,” was dedicated to the Liberal imperialists at the time of the war. We give the pleasure the following:—
“THE HYMN OF THE FLAGELLOMANICS.”
As the miser craves for treasure,
As the drunkard craves for grog,
So we crave for morbid pleasure—
Something sentient to flog!
Give us juvenile offender,
Truant oft from school or church,
Yet for prison cell too tender:—
Ah! to brand him with the birch!
Give us gaol-bird past repentance
Brutalised too deep for that:—
Ah! to wreak on him the vengeance
Of the sanguinary “cat”!
All the tortures—hanging, burning,
Cropping, thumbscrew, boot, and rack—
Pale before our fevered yearning
For the bare and bleeding back.
As the miser o’er his treasure,
As the drunkard o’er his grog,
So we gloat with maniac pleasure
O’er our joys of joys—to flog!
Justice, April 13, 1907, p. 10
Book Reviewed: Consolations of a Faddist